


I've Got Friends on the Other Side

by coyotes



Category: BioShock
Genre: Alternate Universe, Demonic Possession, Drug Use, M/M, copious amounts of sex and coercion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-17 07:25:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2301344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotes/pseuds/coyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes months for Jack, months of thinking and months of coaxing from the man that wasn't a man at all, but he finally says yes.</p><p>Atlas gains a vessel.</p><p>What better way to spend his time than by managing Jack's life for him, with Jack tethered to him between two realms where he functions as a barely-willing audience to his own life in motion, someone else running the show, using his own body as a puppet?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your Future With Me

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Jack Wynand is just a guy with nothing left to lose up topside, and Atlas is just a demon, god, whatever you make of it. He just wants to have fun in the flesh, and Jack makes the perfect body to inhabit.

Jack was a normal guy. 

Jack was happy with his life. 

He had a job.

He had friends. 

Co-workers. That was a better name for them. He had _co-workers_ that _tolerated_ him. He, well, he was a mess. Not that he necessarily thought of that as a bad thing, he hardly noticed it. He’d never questioned the consequences of living in an apartment a couple floors up from the ground consciously, a cramped little thing that screamed exactly what his wage was, down to the tens. It did nothing for his mental state, and neither did a repetitive job -- but he had side things. 

Like the Tenenbaum woman, he babysat for her sometimes. She was his landlord and a scientist or something, kids really well-mannered for a bunch of orphans. Jack could sympathize. They loved him, climbing all over him seemed to be their favorite pastime and he didn't mind, they were like puppies that could talk. Small, mostly seven-year-old puppies in sundresses. But she lowered his rent every time he watched them and it was satisfying to have less zeroes attached at the end of the month but he did it mostly because he didn’t want to be _alone_ all the time. The apartment was weirdly like something out of a horror movie. He’d known Tenenbaum for a while now. Wasn’t really a chore. She looked tired a lot anyway, she didn’t deserve that. Even if she was a terrifying landlord.

So besides his perfectly normal, sort of a little morbid and depressing lower-middle class life, Jack occupied himself with things that most of the people in his life stuck their nose at.

He had an old friend that handed him a bag of white powder once, told him to line it up and snort it. He’d done it once, a couple times, and now he… he still wasn’t even sure how he managed to afford it, but he weaseled his way out of a lot of shit by winging it. Used the zeroes he got out of with Tenenbaum to make up for what he couldn't possibly afford otherwise. He was pretty good at that, weaseling, and now he was lining up the dust he’d gotten from who-knew-where for the umpteenth time, he couldn’t remember, smearing the table by the couch with the stuff. 

All the rest got caught in a blur whenever he started, heart pounding in his chest and in his ears and the rest of him struggling to catch up, the adrenaline that flowed up and up and up with no outlet in the dinky old thing he wouldn’t dare call a house. Jack always found himself leaning back into the couch, twitchy and jumpy while he processed what went through him – blood pumping, heart racing, and sweat gathering on his forehead. He felt like he could run ten miles and then some, tapping his foot on the ground and taking one hand up to his nose to swipe off whatever was left. 

He sat that way for hours as far as he knew; time simultaneously slowing down to a crawl and speeding up faster than he’d ever thought possible. 

Jack must have passed out; he hadn’t noticed the darkness until he moved again, stiff like he was treading through water.

Something flicked his head. Felt like water. 

Jack swatted whatever it was away, tilted his head back into the cushions of the couch.

Something flicked him again. 

Jack opened his eyes with an angry groan, met with someone’s face nearly pressed to his. It was blurry, but definitely a face.

He jumped back as much as he could given that his legs felt like Jell-O, fumbling for the other end of the couch and subsequently falling flat on his face into one of the cushions. By the time he turned around, the figure he’d seen now had hands on either side of his head, one on the armrest of the couch and the other on top of one cushion, caging him in.

“Hey, kiddo, got a favor t’ ask ya.”

Jack sunk further into the couch, blinking until whomever it was stopped looking like three people all at once, and then he aimed a punch to the other guy’s face.  
Which went completely through him.

Jack sat there with his hand and a quarter of his arm embedded in the man above him, going through his cheek and he could see it in there, slowly relaxing from a fist as he grasped the situation.

Sorta.

Jack retracted his hand as fast as humanly possible, shoving it down on the couch and making a noise far down in his throat that could have been a whine.  
Wait. “A… favor?”

The barely-corporeal man above him grinned, a hardy smile that clearly wasn't meant to threaten him. Jack still wasn't sure if he was high or not. This was probably a bad trip or something. From doing too many drugs. He’d never do that again.

“Right,” the man says, as if in response to his inner commentary, and Jack jumps out of his thoughts, watches the man nod somberly. “Right,” he says again, tone like one a teacher might use to a ten year old that got a question right. “Don’t wanna poison yourself, do we now? That’s a smart lad,” the not-man patted the side of his face, winked, and suddenly Jack found himself… opening his eyes again. Sitting up. 

All Jack could remember were the eyes. They were blue, so blue like heated neon behind the man’s pupils. And he suddenly didn't want to touch anything white and powdery unless it was sugar or salt ever again. Looking at the rest of what he’d left on the table made him sick, and he wiped it off into a trashcan before he did anything else.

Didn't even think to transfer the poison to anyone else by saving up what he had left. He wouldn't do that.

\--  
The next few weeks turned to months and it went better, though he was constantly itching for everything he didn't want, some word like _poison_ hanging in his head and drawing him away from whatever demons he had left in him, and Jack was swiftly putting the encounter aside because he felt good about pretty much everything. The dark bags under his eyes were lightening up every time he looked in the mirror, and he’d worked his shift today. Gotten compliments on how nice he looked. Had to fill in for a couple people and worked extra hours, but that made his day. 

The second he walked in the door he kicked off his shoes, unbuttoned his uniform and crawled into bed, shoving himself face-first into the mattress and sighing comfortably. 

(he still had no clue why it was so easy for him to cast out something he’d held onto for so long, something that should have been impossible to break the habit of but was so unexplainably repulsive he couldn't stomach the idea of it after a moment’s thought)

“Y’do look better, ‘specially when you walk. Got a spring in your step now, how’s that like?”

Jack turned his head to the side, one half of his face still buried into the pillow. The sense of dread that came with someone probably breaking crept up his spine but he didn't want to move, opted to open one eye halfway and muster up his best glare. 

“Who’reyou?” He manages, pronounced like one word, and he really just wants to sleep, not this. He’s terrified.

The not-man stares back at him, elbows propped up on the bed and knees on the floor for all Jack could tell, completely undeterred by Jack’s look and his fear. 

“I’m Atlas,” he said matter-of-factly, tilting his head to one side to mimic Jack’s position. “And before you ask what I _want_ , boyo, I see your mouth movin’, don’t try it, I’ll let you in on a secret,” Atlas scooted closer, putting his hand on one side of his mouth like a child trying to hide something from the people around them, “I want _you_ , no use beatin’ ‘round the bush. And I don’t want you fuckin’ yerself up like y’did before, got it? Attaboy.” He said it all too fast for Jack to cognize, and before Jack had a chance to move Atlas touched him – touched his hair, ruffled it, and Jack immediately thought of their first meeting, if that was what it could be called, when Jack tried to touch him and it hadn’t worked. Jack’s entire body flinched, muscles taut and by the time he found himself able to move again he was floundering in the sheets, rays of sunlight dripping through the blinds and no Atlas to be found.

\--

Jack was afraid to sleep.

He was exhausted and it’d been a couple days, he was on his fifth cup of coffee for the day and it was a good thing he was cooped up in his own apartment, his boss’d sent him home, because his legs could barely hold him up and his knees were shaking, stubble rough on his chin and fingers clenched only tight enough to hold the mug, trying not to waste energy. 

Jack knew it was an awful idea to go off to the couch but his legs physically couldn’t hold him up anymore, it was better than the bed, the couch was stiffer and if he was going to sit anywhere it would be there.

The mug was held between both of his hands, warmth coming off of it in waves and a swirl of vapor spiraling up into the air, Jack found himself more content than he should have allowed. He kept dozing off a little, but he always managed to shake himself out of it, exhaustion set deep in his eyes and a bitter frustration in the noises he made while trying to keep himself up. Not letting it get too quiet. 

He blinked once, and when he opened his eyes everything was a little darker, sky outside a deep blue that should have piqued his interest, it was almost ethereal, but he processed it as darkness. Like it wasn’t the morning, he’d either backtracked to before dawn or let his eyes close for too long and now – now he, did that mean he hadn’t come?

“Now, was that really worth it? Y’look even worse than the first time we met,” Atlas sighed, reaching out with an opened palm as if in question, coming just short of touching Jack’s face.  
Jack tilted away from it at first, but he was still too damn tired to fight anything, so he reluctantly stayed put. Atlas squinted at him, as far as Jack could tell, slowly kept reaching his hand out. 

His thumb came in contact with Jack’s cheek, neither cold nor hot but Jack could feel his skin moving beneath his touch, felt him slide his thumb up just below his eye. 

Atlas was invested with that and Jack felt transfixed by his face; hair that was somewhere between black and blue and the slightest bit see-through, the way his body seemed to float along like it weighed nothing at all. 

Jack’s lap suddenly felt very hot, almost painfully so, and he groaned while Atlas sniggered like he knew the punch line and he wasn’t saying it any time soon, and Jack looked down at his pants.

Nothing was there, and he felt like there was some part of the joke he should have gotten, it was on the tip of his tongue, but Atlas went back to doing whatever it was he was aiming for and Jack watched, even if he was overwhelmingly uncomfortable between his legs. 

“I can fix these; they make you look like an awful lot like a junkie,” Atlas said, strangely slow and even… passionate, in some way, as he took his thumb away from Jack and slid his tongue over the pad of it, went back to wiping below Jack’s eye, then the other. “We know you’re not a junkie, right, lad?” 

“Right,” Jack pronounced it as a question, fidgeted a little when Atlas went to wiping at the dark circles like they were dirt. 

“Oh, and I forgot, prob’ly should’a told ye,” Atlas said, leaning back once he figured his work was done, observing Jack with a critical eye, searching for anything else wrong with him, “I can only touch you when y’want me to, and I have to say, it’s flattering, y’let me on the second date, real flattering. Thanks for that, Jackie. ‘N you should get some new pants, by the way.”

Jack woke up with a start, inadvertently kicking the table in front of the couch. Jack hissed, reeling forward and backward until he could find his equilibrium, sitting up on the couch.

He looked at his lap.

The coffee mug was on the floor, empty, a large half-dry stain of liquid covering his entire front, especially between his legs. Most of it had soaked into his clothes and not the couch. Jack cursed under his breath, standing up and starting to undo the zipper at the front of his pants.

He caught himself halfway through the motion, looked up and flicked his eyes around the room.

It was clear and he seemed to be the only one there but Jack wasn’t taking any chances, he shuffled his way to the bathroom and closed, _locked_ the door behind him before changing out of them.

\--

Jack began to dread these visits less and less, mostly because he’d given up trying to avoid them. The day he woke up after the third visit with coffee all over his pants, he went into the bathroom and noticed the circles under his eyes were gone. He wasn’t all that negative to have around, all things considered.

But obviously Jack questioned all of it, he’d never heard of anything called Atlas that would have any interest in humans, mythology behind the name did him no good at all. Jack wasn’t the best at research, though, and he had no idea where to begin with any of this. What did he want? Atlas wanted _him_ , evidently, but he hadn’t explained what that meant.

Atlas couldn’t hurt him, if Jack didn’t want him to touch him he could just… think it, at least that’s how he thought it might work. Jack hadn’t tested it. 

He hadn’t cast him away (was he capable of that?) because maybe, maybe, deep down inside, a tiny part of him liked it. This new aspect of life where he shared his apartment with some creature that was way more than a dog, less than human, and somehow more. It was new and it was different, his own secret he couldn’t tell anyone about or else he’d probably be forced into some kind of rehab program. A secret he wanted to keep.

Sort of. That didn’t mean he liked how terrifying the guy was. Jack didn’t even know _what_ he was.

He was just getting conditioned to having him around. 

\--

“Been watchin’ you a while now,” Atlas started conversationally, after a couple more visits. Nothing happened between them – Atlas would say a few cryptic things that Jack couldn’t understand and leave him to wake up and go about his normal business with all of it on his mind. “Find out a lot ‘bout someone from livin’ with ‘em a couple months.” 

Jack came close to asking about how much Atlas was willing to pay for the rent, even closer to asking him to leave and go away forever, but Atlas put a hand on his knee. Jack felt the pressure, he was only wearing boxer shorts, and he was regretting it every second that passed.  
“Wh-“  
“Learned a lot,” Atlas cut him off, moving so that he wasn’t sitting beside Jack but rather in front of him, taking his other hand and placing it on the other knee. “Did my research before I paid you our first visit.”

Jack’s mouth hung open in the stupidest, slackest way possible, and when Atlas pressed his thumbs to the insides of Jack’s knees he visibly jumped about an inch off the couch, making a noise between a squeal and a whine, and Atlas’ hands phased through Jack entirely, stopping at the couch beneath him.

They stared at each other for a few moments, Atlas with his hands still out of view except where his fingers were spread on the cushion, Jack with his knees slightly elevated and eyes widened in mingling fear and embarrassment. 

Atlas withdrew his hands for a moment, and when he put them back down he placed them just a tad higher.

Didn’t phase through that time. Jack glared warily. 

Atlas reached forward, bringing his upper body closer to Jack, hands sliding slowly up the insides of Jack’s thighs, thumbs pressing lighter than before but enough to bring Jack to open his legs wider without thinking of it. “I’d take good care of you,” he muttered as he shifted closer, distance between them just far enough that Atlas couldn’t whisper into his ear. Except then he got closer, forehead nearly pressed to Jack’s. 

“I’d take such good care of you.” He whispered it so low it was almost a growl, and Jack woke up with his heart pumping blood in his chest so fast it almost hurt.

He was sticky and hot, and – and yeah, that was definitely cum. Jack covered his face with both hands, slowly running them down his face. 

Jack kept his shower as short as he possibly could, pulled on new clothes in record time.

\--

Atlas didn’t visit him the next time he slept. Jack was still trying to digest what had happened, and he couldn’t find himself not thinking about it for more than ten minutes. He dwelled on it something awful, thought he kept feeling the pressure of thumb pads skating up his inner thighs. 

He wished he could get it off his mind. But it was trapped there at the forefront of his brain, focused in and leaving him frustrated beyond belief. Part of him wanted to, to jerk off or something and put it behind him, because he was sort of getting half-hard in too many inappropriate situations for getting half-hard, but the words that Atlas had said, how he watched him, they were too fresh in his mind. He didn’t want Atlas to be able to see him. This was an awful joke and he wanted nothing to do with it. 

Jack found himself on the couch with a bowl of Ramen a few days later, wracked with unrest and bitterness towards a certain person that might not even be real, slurping it up as he watches a sitcom he knows nothing about playing over on the TV at the opposite end of the couch.  
Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

He fell asleep like that eventually, late in the night with an empty cup and fork discarded on the table, arms crossed with a turtleneck cozy enough that a blanket would have just made him stuffy. He could fall asleep pretty much everywhere, that was one of his amazing talents, and maybe he was anticipating something.

If he’d slept in his bed he wouldn’t want to get up or interact with anyone, least of all Atlas. It was a chore to get him moving when he was comfortable. 

Jack was surprised to open his eyes to Atlas flipping through channels on the TV, remote in one hand and his other arm straightened out along the back of the couch and subsequently around Jack. 

“Glad to see me, boyo? Been a while, see you’ve been survivin’ just fine,” he said with a look of malcontent in the way he knotted his brows, incessantly changing channels. “Bored out of my mind here, nothing good on past ten.” 

“Don’t have a lot of channels,” Jack piped up, hands still protectively crossed over his chest. 

Atlas tossed the remote off somewhere to the left of the couch, sighed, if a little dramatically. The arm behind his head shifted, eased down over Jack’s thigh. Dammit, not again. 

“Atlas,” he huffed out in warning as Atlas’ fingers snaked up the rest of the way, so close to his crotch he could feel himself tensing up from the promise of contact. He didn’t like that, that reaction, and Jack opened his mouth to say something else. Something snappy.

“Sh, hush,” Atlas placated him with a set of shushes, squeezing down on Jack’s thigh and waiting for the telltale sound of enjoyment that might follow.

But Jack was holding his breath, and Atlas rolled his eyes. Not that Jack could tell, they just looked like a deep abyss of electric blue, and Jack wasn’t looking at those eyes anyway. “I told you I’d take care of you, thought I might start now just to get my point across, ‘course,” he said as he eased one knee between Jack’s legs, not touching or pressing against anything, just a better position. Jack reached out one hand to lay a palm flat against Atlas’ chest to keep him that distance away and it was getting incredibly _frustrating_ whenever he melted through; Jack couldn’t touch him, hand just coming out the other side uselessly. 

“Y’can’t touch me unless I _let_ you, see, and you can change whether I can whenever your rabbit heart –“ Atlas laid his own palm over Jack’s heart, where it thumped and thumped and thumped and thumped, slid it down to his hip, “—decides you’ve had enough. I can’t touch you ‘less y’let me, y’know that. Goes both ways.”

“I – okay,” Jack said, nervously, and Atlas dipped his hand to Jack’s crotch and squeezed there too, his right hand at the top of one cushion near Jack’s head. Jack flinched initially, moved one hand to grasp Atlas’ wrist between his fingers. He ended up just clenching his fist there in thin air, whimpering when he couldn’t slow Atlas down.

Atlas rubbed his hand over the front of his pants, groping in every way that Jack had ever wanted anyone to do, and the next sound he gave was one of satisfaction as he spread his legs instinctually, gave Atlas more room.

Atlas noticed.

“That’s it,” Atlas purred when he moved his fingers between his pants and his underwear and Jack’s hips jerked up into his hand, humming soft approval into his ear when he cupped his balls and Jack pressed both of his hands into the couch as leverage to grind up against his palm. He held himself like that until Atlas decided to play nice and pushed down against him to get him to put his ass back down on the couch, so he didn’t have to work for it. 

Eventually Atlas stopped teasing him, Jack panting and turning his head away from him because of the flush covering his cheeks; Atlas always found that endearing even if this was only one of the first times he’d experienced it firsthand. He’d seen him do it before, though. 

He looked pretty damn smug as he pulled his hand away and Jack damn near growled at him, but all of that was plugged up by the time Atlas got to his knees and looped his fingers in the belt rings on either side of Jack’s hips, easing Jack forward and tugging his pants down past his hipbones at the same time.  
“I can stop whenever you want me to, Jack,” he said earnestly, placing his elbows on the couch, trapping Jack’s thighs in between them. Jack looked painfully hard, eyes tilted down to look at Atlas like he wasn’t trying to get caught staring and it wasn’t working, the kid didn’t seem to realize that nothing got by Atlas.

Jack’s thighs shivered when Atlas used one hand to hike Jack’s sweater up until Atlas could mouth at his navel. He hooked his fingers beneath Jack’s underwear and pulled down as he went, noting the happy trail Jack had, the one Atlas already knew about. Jack groaned when Atlas pulled him out of his pants, just enough to keep it comfortable for Jack, and Atlas could feel him trying to close his legs. 

“I can stop whenever you want me to,” Atlas said again, taking the head of Jack’s cock into his mouth and laving his tongue over the slit, ignoring the way Jack was constantly trying to grind his hips up into his mouth like someone who had no sense of self control. 

Except he didn’t, Atlas knew that too. 

By the time Atlas had half of his shaft in his mouth, Jack had gotten fed up with keeping his hands in one spot. He’d been fidgeting for pretty much the whole thing, but it got worse over time. Eventually, finally, he tried to grab Atlas’ hair and force him down, but his hand went through and he slammed his hand into the couch between his legs, groaning out his frustration as he pitched forward and tried again, grabbing at the air. 

“Let me touch you, please – Atlas – “

Atlas lifted off of him with a pop, watched Jack shut his eyes and bite down on his bottom lip. “Look at me,” Atlas said with the tone of a longtime lover, and Jack breathed out the tension gathering in his lower stomach, opened his eyes and watched Atlas. 

“Yes,” Atlas said, and Jack’s hand stopped floating and fingers buried in hair instead, and Jack had the loveliest way of tentatively tugging Atlas back to his cock, and Atlas indulged. Atlas technically had no gag reflex, this was a dream and everything was impossibly easy and Jack was no doubt into that – he was into all of this, wariness tossed into the wind and his fingers clenched tight in Atlas’ hair to keep him there even as his back curled into a loose C, legs crossing around Atlas’ back as he went on.

It only took a minute or so for Jack to come undone, moaning when he came and laying spent with his legs squeezing Atlas in like he still didn’t want him to leave, slowly relaxing. He was covered in sweat, his head barely able to hold itself up. 

“See, wasn’t so bad. I could do it for you,” Atlas said, absent minded as he traced his fingers up Jack’s lower stomach, where his sweater was still pulled up, watching Jack twitch with each movement. “Say yes. If y’give yourself t’me I can do this, I can keep doing this, don’t hafta wait for you to close your eyes and you don’t have to wait for me, boyo. Think about it.” 

That was about the fifth time he had to change his pants in the morning.

\--

Jack thought about it, thought about it for months. Atlas got closer. Him and Atlas, their bond, _they_ got closer. Jack began to melt under his touches, Atlas could touch him anywhere he wanted and Jack would let him; let him pull on his hair, let him guide Jack down on his fingers, let him do anything.

Eventually, the ‘yes’es stacked up. He would find himself waking up with the word on his tongue, so close to being said, and only one time he’d really said it.

That was the time he’d woken up humping the bed and didn’t stop just because he was awake, he went until the heat pooled at the base of his spine and he finished on the mattress, wheezing out a ‘yes’ as he grabbed the sheets between his fingers and shoved his face into the pillow.

For some reason, though, that one didn’t count. Probably because he wasn’t saying yes to _Atlas_ , he was saying yes to how great it felt. Who knew? Jack just remembered how good it felt.

When he finally said yes, though, it wasn’t all that different.

\--  
Atlas wasn’t touching him much; he hadn’t touched him this whole night, just sucked on his neck while Jack tilted his head to give him more room. Atlas grazed his teeth up his neck until he found the spot that always had Jack melting into a puddle, nipped at the skin just below his ear.

“Yes,” Jack whined out, grasping at the back of Atlas’ – shirt? – back, keeping him as close as he possibly could without making their forms bleed together. Which he could technically do, if he decided he didn’t want Atlas to touch him anymore. 

“What?” Atlas said, stopping his movements altogether.

“I said yes – ss –“ It turned into a complete hiss as Atlas bit down hard on Jack’s shoulder – and then everything got impossibly fuzzy.

The process was jarring, like being ripped apart at the seams and reassembled in some new way all at once, too much crowding into his head and his body at once while he just wanted to get the pressure off, what felt like a metric ton stepping on his ribcage and in his head, especially his head – but it felt good, in some way, impossibly warm, like he imagined it must feel like to sit on the surface of the sun in a body that couldn’t burn. Jack couldn’t scream, he was a mess and he couldn’t feel his legs, or his arms, or mouth, or anything, forced to go limp and deal with the tearing at his _everything_ , impossible pain washing over him.

And then it all stopped at once, Jack touching his head with a soft groan. He wasn’t in pain anymore but he just felt… beat, dog-tired. 

Something was picking him up with one arm, swinging him over one shoulder and tossing him to some other part of the couch. Jack made another noise of discomfort, he felt like _he_ was the one lifting the weights here.

“I’ve been waiting so _long_ for this, kiddo. You have _no_ idea.” 

That was his own voice.

Jack looked up, straightened himself out on the couch to get a better look.

He could see the couch through himself.

His legs faded off into the air the closer they got to his feet, like – like Atlas looked, when Atlas was still Atlas.

Jack screamed, he couldn’t help it, backed up into the corner and stared down at himself with his eyes wider than he thought he was capable of. 

“You’re fine,” Atlas – Jack – said, “but look at _me_.” Jack looked up just in time to see his own body turn around a couple times in succession, before a laugh was given off in his voice. But it sounded off, the tiniest bit, like it wasn’t his native tongue. Atlas did sound different when he was Atlas, he…

Jack watched his body stalk (stalk was the only word he could think of to describe the motion) to the window in the living room, watched him open it like he wasn’t used to having hands. 

Jack – not him Jack, Atlas Jack, stuck his head out the window and yelled into the wind, the sound followed by laughter bubbling up in his mouth and a grin replacing the awe he’d had just moments ago.

“Don’t do that,” he protested from his corner on the couch, “there’s some kids downstairs, they nap a lot – “

But Atlas was already heading off somewhere else, and Jack was afraid of what he might do unattended, so Jack tried to lift himself off the couch. He tripped right off the bat, and he should have hit the table but he caught himself on his hands and knees, half of him going right through the wooden thing. Well, that was... alright. Jack stood up on legs that, by every law of science, shouldn't work, and he trailed after Atlas, even if he did feel a little sick and scared. Especially the scared part. If he could have, he'd probably have pissed himself already. 

Atlas had taken his body to the bathroom, and he was currently looking at himself in the mirror above the sink. 

"Look at how sharp your teeth are!" He said, ecstatic as he pulled Jack's lips, showing off his canines. They weren't really all that sharp, but Atlas touched his fingers to them anyway, grinning around them. "I could kill someone with these."

"Please don't," Jack said in a small voice by the door, grabbing at the frame where the door met the wall, he can see the power coming off of Atlas in blue zigzags and bubbles, coming from his fingertips and especially from his eyes, the same neon he'd grown so used to getting hypnotized by now on his own body. 

"I've waited years for this, kiddo. Nothing's gonna ruin it now, I can tell you that." He keeps touching himself, hands running over his lips and stretching out his skin and his jaw, and Jack can feel him touching his skin even if he's not the one being touched. " _Finally._ " He won't stop laughing occasionally, and Jack's never seen his body so full of motion before. So animated. 

He's lifting up Jack's sweater, looking at what he's mouthed before, grinning madly as he runs one hand through his hair. Ruffles it up until it's messy and sticking up on all the wrong ends. "You're huge, never seen what it looks like from your point of view. How tall are you again? 6 feet?"

"6'3," Jack pipes in, tries to say something else, but he hears the unbuttoning of pants and he's suddenly extremely curious, and when Atlas shoves a hand down his pants, Jack can feel it too, and when Jack's own hand wanders he can feel his entire body shaking -- it doesn't feel like the same heat, the physical, and Jack looks down at his hand, sees part of him going fuzzy and blurred where it shouldn't have been, huh. That concerned him. But he was tired, he'd figure everything out later.

"Oh, boyo," he finally turns to look at Jack when he's done for the moment, done with exploring what he can with all of his clothes still on, those blue eyes staring him down, "you and I are going to have _so_ much fun together."

Jack realized, in that moment, the gravity of his mistake.


	2. Hey, Open Wide Here Comes Original Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 of Possession!AU. Atlas has fun ruining Jack's life in Jack's own shoes, one baby step at a time. Poor Jack.

So, picking things up was no longer an option. Jack had stood by the counter grasping at a cup that was left there for a good minute, poking at it and watching his finger slide right through. Only things he could really interact with were surfaces that he couldn’t _actually_ feel, he couldn’t interact with them but he could give the illusion that he was, like the couch. It felt real, mostly because he wasn’t used to phasing through the couch or walls. 

The only thing he felt, really _felt_ was Atlas, but Jack wasn’t too inclined to think about that after Atlas tried to prove a point in showing Jack how to work around what he had to deal with by shoving him into a wall – Jack’s head had gone straight through and it felt plain wrong. Jack avoided it as well as he could. 

This was all in a span of about thirty minutes from Jack losing his body, so all in all, pretty eventful first day. 

Jack, well, he was still catching up.

“What should we do first, huh, Jackie?” 

When Jack did nothing but glare hopelessly back at himself, Atlas smiled. Even a little friendly. At least someone was happy. 

“Well if you’re out of ideas, I think I’ve got just the one. Might as well pay you back for giving me this, why don’t we have one last day at the office?”

“I don’t work in an office.”

Atlas shrugged. He made a vague hand motion that could have represented ‘toe-may-toe toe-mah-toe’, but Jack wasn’t sure if Atlas would even know about that phrase. Jack and the people around him didn’t use it too much, and Atlas did say he’d watched him for a long time. “Care to join me?”

Jack sighed (only for the effect, he had no reason to breathe) and turned his head away from Atlas, to which Atlas responded by wheeling towards the doorway and resting his hand over the knob. “Fine, but it hurts.”

Door slamming behind him, Atlas left, leaving Jack to stand (float) there in the near-silence of his apartment and no way of touching a single thing in it. Jack had really only tried to prove his reluctance in the whole situation, he didn’t – 

Something tugged at his neck. 

The pulling travelled lower, settled over where his heart ought to be. It began as an uncomfortable throb, someone pulling insistently at the front of his shirt, but it grew rougher and rougher and Jack stood there for a few moments, eyes wide as he clutched at where the pain was with one hand. 

It became a smart ripping at his skin, slowly stabbing him in the chest and going deeper and deeper until the invisible knife twisted sideways and Jack whined, shutting his eyes and bowing forward, grabbing at his shirt with one hand over the other. His entire form was shivering, flecks of blue tearing their way off and floating separately just above where they’d come from while the rest of him fluctuated like a sound wave, not in any way a solid like a person should be. Jack moaned, muttering out a broken “Atlas,” that sounded too ghostly and contorted to really come out as a _word_ , the hot pain in his chest wrapping around something that felt like his heart but wasn’t, something far more important and intimate and Jack could feel the weight of it crushing him to pieces and tugging him in so many ways he wasn’t sure which was up and which was down. Or away. 

Jack tried to work his limbs, get them to move – Atlas was outside, Jack could just – he grabbed for the doorknob and it slid through his fingers; Jack panicked, grasped a few times with his hand squeezing around nothing, balling into a tight fist within the knob until Jack turned his eyes blearily up to the door itself. He forced his eyes shut again as he went through, coming out the other side with no harm done to either the door or himself – except that pain was getting harder and harder to stand and his vision was getting cloudy, and Jack sounded out a mantra of Atlas’ name as he not-so-gracefully tore and phased his way down the stairs, several flights of them, down to the main level. 

The pain had eased into something not so awful and Jack made his way to the garage where his truck should be, hopefully, blue _something_ dripping from one corner of his mouth. Jack couldn’t find the energy to question what it was, just dragged himself forward however he could. 

Atlas hadn’t gone anywhere; he was sitting in the front seat, tapping at the wheel absent-mindedly with one of his fingers. Jack found himself climbing into the truck on the passenger side for the first time, hand reaching out to clench fingers into Atlas’ shoulder, used that as a stepping stone to pull himself up the rest of the way before he laid his forehead against his arm and grabbed at him with two hands to hold him steady, curling up as much as he could. 

“I told you it would hurt,” Atlas said blankly, all Jack’s voice, Jack’s body, Jack’s hands, and Atlas lifted his head for him and wiped the bubbles of that blue water away from his mouth with Jack’s thumb, holding his head up by the chin because Jack wasn’t able to hold it up himself. “Your body’s just a house for your soul. Getting too far from it hurts. Usually let ‘em go when I take their bodies, but I like the faces you make. Can’t replicate those. Also, I need you to tell me how to work your car.”

Atlas tilted Jack so that he could look at the controls of the car. “It’s just a stick shift,” Jack replied slowly, lifting up his head on his own and rubbing at his face with his hands that weren’t hands. “You don’t know how to use a _stick shift_?” 

\--

“Have I ever told you that Pauper’s Drop is the least appealing name on this side of the pond? What does that even mean?” 

“I don’t _know_ \-- I just work here,” Jack growled from Atlas’ side, tone full of frustration and regret like a dog who’d been tricked into going to the vet and somehow managed to speak the human language. It had been stressful from the start, teaching someone to drive stick when the last vessel they probably took was probably ages before the car even existed because Jack was the only one stupid enough to agree to it – it was awful. The whole experience was awful, and Jack was pretty sure Atlas had almost gotten Jack’s body maimed or destroyed at least three times in the process. It was a miracle that they hadn’t gotten arrested. 

Jack noticed now that they were outside of the apartment now that he was only seeing in blues and greys, and the only blues he could see were on himself and – himself, coincidentally. Atlas’ eyes, at the tips of his fingers. Jack wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t want to ask. 

Not yet. Not now.

“Alright, kiddo. I’m excited to meet your friends in person; they seem like a nice enough bunch.” 

“Please don’t hurt them.”

Atlas laughed with Jack’s voice, a bright chuckle that wound off with a sigh. “ _Hurt_ them? Jeez, why would I do that? Just wanted to introduce them to the new you, ‘s all. Relax.” And Atlas patted him on the back from inside the truck, hopped out with way too much vigor in his step. 

Jack followed because he had no choice in the matter unless he wanted another soul-attack, and that old simile about the dog and the vet was even truer now. At least Atlas wasn’t telling him to heel. 

\--

Jack’s boss was a nice woman. She found him at the goodwill and had laughed, not in a bad way, when he tried to explain that hardly anything fit him because of his size, she was the one who got him the job in the first place. She’d told him a lot about things that happened before he was up and walking, still in diapers or, in some cases, before he was born. She used to be a huge blues singer, she told him, and Jack never doubted it once. They were on good terms.  
Every Monday they’d have a soup kitchen event in the little restaurant for the people that couldn’t afford anything else, and she’d _sing_. It comforted the people that came in, usually with blankets and carts of other stuff – Jack had been there once, for a long time. It was an easier day for everyone involved, all good-natured laughs and genuine thank you’s, and Jack usually had a shift that day.

He _usually_ stayed the whole time. Grace was the perfect host, and the people that came in were everyone’s favorite guests. 

Thank God it wasn’t a Monday. 

And thank God Grace wasn’t in, either. Yet. The picture of her smiling in black-and-white by the front door made him ashamed as Atlas strolled in front of him. 

Jack waited _tables_ , he had no idea how this could be any fun for Atlas.

Not until the first customers came. It was a relatively smooth morning, as Jack would call it in his head, and Atlas was grinning in his body in a way that could only be described as suspiciously comfortable. Jack figured the best thing he could do was wait it out, maybe pray for the couple that just sat down at one of his tables. 

Atlas got them their drinks.

Atlas got them their food. 

Atlas _knew_ how to wait. 

It went pretty smoothly until about halfway through their meal, Atlas placed his elbows on the table and cupped his cheeks with his hands, turned to the man and said, “Have you ever wondered how you’re going to die?”

They stared at him. Jack stared at him too. 

“ _Excuse_ me?” 

Atlas leaned closer, grinned his wide grin that didn’t belong anywhere on Jack’s face. “I said, have you ever _wondered_ how you’re going to die?” And then he winked, so close to the man’s nose they might as well have been touching.

The guy chuckled, awkward and nervous. Atlas hovered over him in Jack’s body, looked down at him with a blue electric twinkle in his eyes. The nameless man rolled his eyes, decided to play along. The girl smiled too. “Sure, man. Sure.” 

Atlas bent himself so that he could whisper in the guy’s ear, and Jack watched from his position off to the side, saw the man’s eyes widen as he flicked his eyes over to the girl with growing horror, as if accusing her of this brilliantly set-up scheme. Jack felt bad for her, she looked pretty nice. It took a while, Atlas was muttering too low for Jack to hear, and the tips of Atlas’ fingers were pulsing with blue light. The same light was swirling over the guy’s hair, flowing out of his head in sapphire rivulets.

Once Atlas began to pull back, clearly finished, the man stood up and punched him square in the nose. 

Jack yelped from his spot in the empty booth beside them, grabbing at his nose the same time that Atlas covered his actual body’s nose. The man grabbed at the front of Jack’s shirt, tugged Atlas down so that they were almost eye level. 

“I’ll kill you, you hear? I’ll _kill_ you if you ever come near me again, I’ll have your ass on the _streets_ ,” he said, shaking Atlas where he stood before trying – and failing – to throw him back, settled for pushing him out of the way and grabbing the girl as he went.

Atlas used his sleeve to wipe at the blood, left the rest of it there as it poured out. “Mors certa, vita incerta!” He yelled after him, waving a little as he smiled, voice slightly deeper than what Jack was used to hearing from Atlas. Richer. Less… human, really. 

“…Atlas?” Jack spoke up from his corner in the booth, finally taking his hands away from his face. 

“What’s up, kiddo?”

“ _Why_ did you _do_ that?”

Atlas turned to him, gave him a ‘come hither’ motion with one of his fingers and replied with a simple, “I wanted to make sure they wouldn’t forget your face when you moved on to bigger and better things. He was cheating on that girl, Jack. Her and four others. That’s a bit much, don’t you think?” And then he turned on his heel, like – like some kind of smug schoolgirl, and Jack scrambled out of the booth to follow him. 

Atlas whistled, called for the attention of everyone within hearing range. “Well, it’s been nice knowing you, tell the old bitch that I _quit_ ,” he said as he dramatically took the badge with his name on it off of his shirt and threw it to the ground, sending it clattering on the tile by the main doors. 

Even after Atlas walked out and left the bell at the door jingling behind him Jack stood there, sitting as frozen as everyone else in the restaurant.

Murmurs picked up again, awkward side conversations resumed at respective tables. Waiters apologized. Some of them stood there – the ones that Jack really knew, and they looked like… like they expected it. Like they were _disappointed_ in him. Jack got out of there before he could hear them talk about it. He didn’t want to hear it. Jack was _sorry_ , sorry that he – Atlas – fuck. 

Atlas was still in the parking lot, evidently waiting for him.

“What, think it was too much?”

Jack balled up his fist and grabbed Atlas, aiming for the second punch of the day to his own body, mid-swing when Atlas gave him a very firm, “No.”

Everything stopped and Jack couldn’t move himself at all – or at least not his arm, trapped there and paralyzed from the shoulder down – and Atlas placed his palm over Jack’s fist and pushed it down and out of the way. “You left your freedom up for grabs when you said yes, kid. You wanna see what I can _do_ to you? Do you really feel like pickin’ a fight with someone who’s been ripping souls out of people for centuries just for the hell of it? This is _mine_ , you’re mine. Thought we proved that earlier when you couldn’t even handle being more ‘n twenty feet from me.” 

Atlas placed one hand in the air, taking his other hand and using it to force Jack to watch him. Something so bright it was almost pure white snaked itself around Jack’s body’s hand, winding between his fingers until it pulled taut the second that Atlas clenched his fist around it. “This is _my_ leash, boy. You know what happens if I snap it? Your soul goes flying off into the great oblivion like a balloon.” He spread his fingers and moved his hand out of the way, let the string shift in the air like vapor. He ran one finger through it and it dissolved, leaving Jack with a phantom pain in his chest. “You’ll _pop_. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows up there, in case you haven’t figured that out, why do you think I’m still down here? I’m doing you a favor.” 

\--

He had no reason to talk after that. Jack had kept his lips shut the whole way home and Atlas didn’t appear to need his help, driving just fine on his own. Jack stayed out of his way when they got back, and Jack had no clue why he was torturing Jack like this. Going back to familiar places instead of doing whatever the hell it was he wanted to, forcing Jack to be his partner in crime in everything he did. Jack wanted nothing more than to disappear – if he had to be with Atlas, sure, it was his own fault. He messed up. But not ruin everything Jack had set up… which, arguably, wasn’t much, but the people in his life meant the world to him. Jack was never the best at making friends growing up, the present was no different. What was Atlas going to do without income?

Jack was asking that about a non-human creature that could steal bodies and tell people when they were going to die. Right. Bad question.

“C’mere,” Atlas said in his voice, too pleasant to even allude in any way what he’d done back in the parking lot. Jack did in fact ‘c’mere’, a sour expression on his face that expressed exactly how much he wanted to do with Atlas right now. Exactly not at all. Zip. 

“Won’t have that frown on your face for long, kiddo. Gotta show you something, this isn’t all bad. Promise.” Jack was still suspicious even as Atlas lead him to Jack’s bedroom, leading Jack by the collar of his shirt and pulling him up like he weighed nothing to force Jack with his legs on either side of his body’s hips on the bed. Atlas sat up against the headboard and Jack was really, really having trouble with coping because he was looking at himself, sitting on himself, touching himself. Atlas noticed and snorted, shaking his head at the absurdity that was _Jack_.

Atlas started unzipping his pants, and Jack made an out-of-breath noise of surprise. “What are you doing?”

Well. That was sudden.

“Showing you. You know what happens when someone punches me while you’re there sitting pretty on your little leash, now you can feel this. And so can I.” He lifted his eyebrows and relaxed them again just as fast, corners of his lips twitching up. Jack found his tongue caught in his throat again and he simply took to watching, watched Atlas use his hands to unzip his pants and it was… strange, obviously, but not in a bad way – Atlas moved like _Atlas_ when he used his body, it was different. His eyes were different, too. 

Jack was situated far enough on his body’s legs that he didn’t block him, and Atlas only pulled his pants down just enough to get a hand around himself. He took Jack’s hand and licked his palm, getting drool all over it before he touched himself, though, which was pretty okay, decent even. 

When he did finally gets his fingers around him Jack felt himself physically shiver in a whole different way than goose bumps or a real body shiver, and once Atlas began to move he lost a way of telling where the shivers were coming from – not his body, not Atlas. Atlas wasn’t shivering, but Jack certainly was, from every direction. There was no heat in his pants or anywhere specific but it filled him up nonetheless, and Jack whimpered with it. 

“Different, huh?” Atlas said as he picked up his pace, his own breaths coming out in soft huffs that Jack had never heard from another person’s point of view before. Jack squeezed his legs around Atlas’ – his – thighs because he felt like he might keel over. Jack only nodded – always weak to touch, even as a ghost of his former self. Fantastic. Jack continued to shake, resting one hand on Atlas’ chest. Atlas pumped harder, watching Jack instead of watching himself, observing every time Jack’s form shifted in front of him like it couldn’t stay in one place – and when Atlas slid his thumb over the head of his cock Jack moaned, throat and sounds wet and slick with blue fizzing up from his insides, dissolving just as quick as it came. It echoed for a long time, that noise, backed up by several other smaller huffs and groans that faded off just the same way. 

“You’re so loud, that’s what I’d miss out on if I let you go,” Atlas said quietly, lifting his free hand to Jack’s mouth and catching the electric blue that dripped off the tip of his tongue, smearing it back on Jack as he multitasked. Everything Jack was experiencing felt somewhere between a glitch and a – melting – Atlas kept his own noises to a minimum in favor of letting the air fill with Jack’s drippy whines, sliding his hand through Jack’s form, into his hair, carding through what was way too permeable to feel like hair at the moment, Jack flickering in and out of color like a dying flame. A gorgeous one. 

Atlas finally couldn’t keep his own eyes open, jerking up and down just slow enough to savor it and not torture either of them – except maybe Jack, the resident soul vibrator, apparently, “you get tired faster, too – don’t run on the same things people do -- _fuck_ \-- you get it back again eventually but all those ebb and flows or, whatever you wanna call ‘em, take a number,” and Atlas tilted is head forward to meet Jack, who was bent forward enough to touch because he was frantically grabbing onto his body’s clothes, trying to find something solid to hold onto, and Atlas kept his other hand on Jack’s thigh, keeping him grounded from that too. Atlas could feel him beneath his fingers, practically pulsing with energy coming off of him in waves, and in a human body it was so, so different. Numbed his fingers, everywhere Jack was touching. Jack was saying Atlas’ name again, voice caught between tired moans and genuine worry, afraid that he was going to come apart altogether and Atlas – Atlas was doing great, thank you, felt on fire in every way that was good.

Atlas came with a deep sigh and Jack didn’t physically finish but – everything went so bright it couldn’t be humanly possible to even see that shade of white, and he evened out eventually, everything a fuzzy grey and muted blue in his eyes. 

Someone rang the fucking doorbell. 

Jack wasn’t capable of moving and he sat there rigid while Atlas maneuvered himself out from under him, zipped up his pants again and kissed the side of Jack’s face, patronizing. He yelled something about ‘giving him a second’ to whoever it was at the door and Jack could hear him ripping paper towels from the rack and wiping off his hand. 

The door opened eventually and Jack heard the almost-synchronized cry of ‘Papa Jack!’, immediately snapping up to attention. He was groggy, too groggy, but he managed to lift himself enough to stagger like a blind drunk to stand in one of the doorways. He could see Tenenbaum at the door behind the girls – his girls, there was Sally, she was the only one with blonde hair and… he couldn’t see the color of her dress, but he could always tell. 

“Ah, do you think you could watch them for me, child? Just until I finish errands. They talk about you, _all_ the time, beg me to see you only after a few days. ‘Papa Jack!’, ‘Papa Jack!’, all I ever hear, night and day.” Jack can hear the smile in her voice, sees the girls as excited as she claims they are – and this time the pang in his chest is caused by a different sort of separation. 

There’s a plea in her words, something that begs him to let them stay. The girls sounded happy as could be and Atlas looked the woman over, putting on his most convincing puppy dog face. The one he’d seen Jack make dozens of times while looking at her. “Course I can,” he said, and Tenenbaum visibly brightened. She was tired, that much was obvious, old bird had kids up the wazoo, couldn’t blame her. By errands she probably meant resting, too. 

The woman bent down to address the girls, all dressed up in sundresses and hair in ponytails, all five of them, proceeded to go through the speech of telling them to ‘be good, be nice, be blah blah blah,’ that whole thing, and when Tenenbaum stood up again, she addressed Jack this time. “Danke, thank you, child. Thank you.” And she left, leaving Jack’s body with five little girls and Jack’s soul still trying to rearrange itself into something real off in the corner.

What a strange woman. 

\--  
For some guy that visited him in his dreams all the time, he sure didn’t grasp the concept of exhaustion very well. The girls were rowdy as they always were, full of life and bubbly cheerfulness that only kids (and Jack, not too long ago) could share, but eventually Atlas had gotten them to settle. It was a tough effort and Jack wasn’t sure why he wasn’t fucking this up for him, too. 

But watching his body from across the room sit with his favorite girls on the couch with their attention glued to the T.V. really hurt him. Maybe Atlas had found the one thing he wouldn’t tread upon. Wouldn’t ruin. 

Or he was setting Jack up again; Jack was too exhausted to care. He still felt good, aftershocks and shivers persisting even now, hours later. The sky was dark and Atlas was dozing on the couch with the girls, in his body. In… his body. Jack still didn’t want to believe that. Jack found himself settling into some sort of hibernation state as Atlas nodded off.

He felt tugging again in the haze of thoughts and his makeshift body, looked up to see Atlas waving at him from the couch, girls sleeping under a blanket that hadn’t been there the last time Jack blinked. Jack tried to stand, swaying and tilting every which way until he finally made his way to the couch, where Atlas helped him the rest of the way. Jack rested his head between his own neck and shoulder, lounging sideways in his lap. He would have cried against him if he could cry like this, if his eyes could water.

The sound of police sirens and an ambulance outside the window and down the street didn’t rouse any of them at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the positive feedback i've gotten from you especially on the other sites im on all make me so happy ;w; thank you so much everyone!! it's so fun to write, there'll definitely be more... also don't worry kiddos you have no idea how awful atlas is in this au yet but you will soon i promise. also there will be real sex and not just cop-out handjobs or blowjobs. also sander cohen. these things may be mixed in some way. we just don't know!


End file.
